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ATHABASCA, Alta. — Jolene Cardinal and Vincent Auger thought they had a simple plan Sunday when they joined 7,000 other evacuees from the town of Slave Lake.

But in much the same abrupt way that the forest fire invaded their hometown, the teens found themselves suddenly separated from their families, bouncing from point to point on the evacuation route, watching a red glow on the horizon punctuated by explosions and the sound of terrified wildlife haunting the smoke-filled air.

"Nothing but red. It was scary," Auger, 16, said Monday.

"We could hear animals, coyotes and wolves. They were just screeching, yelping," Cardinal added. "It was pitch black, you couldn't see anything."

To save space in the family vehicle, Cardinal hopped a bus with her friend heading to the town of Athabasca, about 125 kilometres away, where they planned to meet up with their families. But the bus rolled right past the Athabasca exit and headed for Westlock, the next town of any size.

Athabasca was simply too full of refugees.

They reached Westlock around 5 a.m., but the driver had by then been rerouted again to Edmonton.

"It just all happened to fast. I feel lost, misplaced," said Auger. "They can't bring our town back."

The pair said town residents first grew worried Saturday, when the fire was burning south of the town. When they woke the next morning, police were still saying no one needed to evacuate, but should just head to safe locations like the Walmart parking lot.

But houses were starting to burn.

Cardinal's family — 11 of them — fled in a Jeep, each with just one bag of clothes, when the house behind theirs caught fire.

But they had only half a tank of gas — not enough to get to Athabasca — so they drove around the burning town searching for more.

"We were in traffic. We couldn't get out of there," said Cardinal.

The radio was down, the power was out, the only information they could get came from listening to a portable police scanner. Then, at about 9:30 p.m., the police switched to another channel and they lost even that source of information.

Most evacuees describe a similar experience: tense hours of waiting, followed by mayhem.

Farron Gillespie took his kids swimming Sunday morning as the fire burned. The air seemed to have less smoke and on the radio, town officials were saying there was no need to evacuate. Then the wind changed. The fire jumped two highways, exploded a truck stop and threw sparks onto downtown roofs.

When Gillespie got back home, the smoke was so thick he had trouble breathing. His truck wouldn't start. A neighbour ran down the block to boost it. The tank was empty. He crossed his fingers and prayed the single jerry can of gas he saved for the lawn mower would be enough to get his family out.

Bushes in the backyard were already burning as he and his wife, Melissa Chisaakay, peeled out of there, their one-year-old on her lap.

As they drove, officials were still saying no evacuation was necessary.

"That was the stupidest thing we ever heard," said Gillespie, shaking his head. "Thank God we didn't listen."

Keyki Anderson, now at the Edmonton Expo Centre, took shelter with her family on a gravel pad at a construction centre west of town after they found the road to Wabasca was closed. They could feel the explosions rocking the town, she said.

Each pop was followed by a gust of wind so strong and hot they had to turn their faces away.

"It was so smoky, it was hard to breathe," said Anderson. "It looked like hell."

"I've lived in Slave Lake 23 years and I've been through four fires, and I've never seen anything like this," said Byron Kashuba, sipping a coffee outside the Athabasca evacuation centre in Athabasca. "I don't have anything bad to say, but I can't believe we weren't given more notice."

Evacuees were told to register in Athabasca or Westlock. Others were headed Monday to Edmonton's Northlands arena, where hundreds of cots are set up in an exhibition hall.

Kashuba has accepted the fact that his home likely won't be there when residents are eventually able to return.

He received a frantic phone call from his wife around 6 p.m., when residents realized they would have to get out as quickly as possible. There wasn't enough time to even grab the supplies they had packed, Kashuba said. Just enough time to get the kids, the pets and the essentials piled into a car.

"The smoke became so thick," he said. "When my wife came out of the block, she saw the house at the end of the street — maybe 10 houses away — already on fire.

"We heard the explosions. We saw the black smoke," Kashuba recalled. "When we left, there was nothing left to go to. You were just happy to get out of there."

He described seeing families hunkered down in campers on the sides of the roads out of town, many of them short the fuel to take them through the rest of the journey south to safety.

Another teen evacuee — a 16-year-old who would only give her first name, Cher — said the trailer park where she lived on the south side of town was the first to be hit by flames on Saturday. She and her boyfriend fled the neighbourhood by bike. He had to pull on her arm as she struggled to bike into the wind with a sprained ankle.

Later, they just sat at Walmart, as buildings went up in towers of flames across town.

"There were gas stations going up left and right. It seems so fake but it was real. They let it get out of control this time and now we have nothing," she said. "They were telling Slave Lake not to evacuate but the houses were already burning. It hurt, watching our town getting eaten up so fast."

Shane O'Brien needed to see his house one last time. He walked two kilometres from an evacuation centre in Slave Lake — a tall can of Coors Light in his hand — just to see what used to be his home. Only the foundation remained after a wildfire swept through the community just hours before.

"I'm so glad I checked out my house," he said, shopping for toiletries in Kingsway Mall in Edmonton. "I'd be wondering right now what happened to it."

O'Brien snuck away from the evacuation site at a Canadian Tire parking lot to find his fridge standing upright in a pile of rubble after falling through the first floor of his duplex.

Only the sprockets from his two motorcycles remained of his garage. His quad and three deep freezers were reduced to ash.

"I'd feel guilty if it was still standing."

Once in a while something pops into his mind, something he wants but doesn't have. His ATV, his kitchen appliances, his bed. He was covered by fire insurance but doesn't yet know if it includes wildfires. He doesn't know where to start.

"I don't know what's the first step. Do I start calling insurance companies?"

For Norman James, another evacuee at the Athabasca centre, the most troubling part of the situation now is not knowing what the town he's called home for the past 12 years has been reduced to.

"I'm not worried about my house — It's material. It can be replaced," James said. "It's the waiting game. I'm just curious."

Despite the devastation and fear that swept over the town's residents, spirits were remarkably upbeat as evacuees traded stories and shared whatever information they had.

Some evacuees have complained about the lack of information, not knowing if or when to get out even as the town burned around them.

That couldn't be helped, Employment and Immigration Minister Thomas Lukaszuk told a news conference at the Edmonton evacuation centre Monday. The fire spread so fast, fire crews had to focus first on those who were in immediate danger, he said.

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